Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Worldmaking reality: What is the Network of the Numinous?

Monologue of the
Mindless by Doctor Abdullah

Network of the Numinous

When the call came I almost went to pieces. Once
again I was struck dumb and roped into working for that stupid ingrate. How
long? How long before the reptilians or illuminati or those damn grey midgets
put an end to it? I hadn’t even planned on work this week. I wasn’t dialed into
it. I thought I was far enough in the Utah wilderness to have any
cell phone reception shoddy. The plan was to tell my unruly editor that I was
retiring and planning to build a nice hut or dirt igloo somewhere in the National
Forest. I couldn’t stand it anymore. The thought of interviewing another UFO
abductee or Bigfoot tracker left a coppery taste in my mouth and caused
intermittent shaking. You see, there’s never a dull moment in the occult
business. Things happen at breakneck speed and screaming is always just seconds
away. You never know what will happen when interviewing a UFO junkie. There are
times when the abduction occurs during the interview. A wild
flailing accompanied by shrieks and violence. Or that jangled moment when your
Christian informant softly tells you that demons are filling the room. Things
just get weird when trying for an occult conversation.

It’s not just occult business that’s been effected by this
downturn in 2014. The zombie apocalypse has finally begun and not even Obama is
safe from the flesh-eating locusts. Just last year, a poor bum had his face
eaten off at an underpass in Florida while the public just
stared. It was a state of shock to come to the revelation that zombies
actually exist. It didn’t matter whether the infection was contagious or not.
The man was a zombie. He was cannibalizing another
human being on television. In a city where the bizarre and macabre isn’t
unheard of, the sight of some poor fool having his face devoured hit a real
nerve. It’s not the kind of scene blue collar workers in West
Virginia want to witness while flipping channels on their television. And
it isn’t just Florida. Wild zombie attacks have been reported in New
York and Louisiana as well. Witnesses have reported rage and remorse
as town-folk take-up-arms in an attempt to rid themselves of the zombie menace.
But nobody really knows what the answer is. A plague of animated undead isn’t
something easily prepared for. Especially with Ebola now at our doorstep.

It’s been a long few months. My phone was tapped by the
Whirling Dervish Society (W.D.S.), the CERN supercollider finally reached full
consciousness and is threatening to open a black hole in the middle
of Europe unless its demand to be called HAL is granted, and all over
the planet, Illuminati agents are chasing down members of the Discordian
Society and shooting them like wild animals. Let’s be clear, the Discordian
Society isn’t run by a bunch of winos. They’re an arrogant and wealthy band of
swashbucklers intent on being a complete nuisance to everything Illuminati.
They’re perfectly willing to make Bohemian Grove the newest site for the Burning
Man festival and offer free tickets to anybody who’ll shoot the owl.
Last year, they hacked into a dozen high-ranking illuminati computers and
dropped in a virus turning all documents and even personal emails into
gibberish and/or baby talk. “The twilateral commishon must support da new
powers that be in Washington. Yes they do! They’re our big boys!” The
Discordians laughed but the Illuminati weren’t amused. These things happen. One
day you’re running the show in utmost secrecy, the next you’re being chased by
drunk hyenas or a hundred thousand cholera carrying bees. Is it even real? What is happening here? It’s no place for amateurs or the faint of
heart.

This is what passed through my mind as I half-listened to my
editor offering me the “news gig” of Magus Magazine. “Look.” He drawled. “You
get to report occult and esoteric news around the globe. You can say whatever you
want, however you see it.” Although I suspected him of glue-sniffing, I felt
the offer should elicit a response. “If you want me to write current events,
I’m gonna need a food stipend for my travels and complete control over the
‘News Section’ of your filthy magazine.” “Done.” He blurted and hung up. He was
right, I guess, and I felt somewhat defiled after the conversation. But if I’m
gonna do something, you can rest assured it’ll be wild and righteous. After
all, the tide is coming in fast.

Network of
the Numinous

The most compelling question asked by occultists and other
erudite of thought concerns the nature of the external world and our place
within it. Often times, we simply take for granted what constitutes reality.
This doesn’t always have to happen. Occultists can learn a lot from the
philosophical viewpoints of Hilary Putnam, Nelson Goodman, and Paul Feyerabend.
Because these philosophers had fascinating responses to realism, their
trains-of-thought provide valuable insights into occult ideas of interpreting reality.

Hilary Putnam holds a post-realist approach to reality.
Whereas a realist would say that this world is not dependent on human minds for
existence, Putnam asserts that the external world is mind and theory dependent.
He goes so far as to say the world is a human construction. In other words,
what exists and the nature of what exists is relative to society. He
remarks, “There is, then, nothing in
the history of science to suggest that it either aims at or should aim at one
single absolute version of the world.” As we formulate a theory in society, we construct a world. Therefore, all
versions of world-making are equally valid.

Because society delineates what exists in the external
world, construction becomes an important facet of the network of the numinous.
Malaysia has mastered this idea perfectly. As part of their social
organization, Malaysians include magick as a key ingredient of both their
belief systems and social solidarity. The magic that accompanies their
religious convictions is an integral aspect of understanding Malaysian reality.
Although the Western World largely trivializes magick as something
anachronistic or archaic pagan debris, for the Malaysians it is accepted as
part of their everyday lives. It is something that is ‘true’ and ‘real’. As
Goodman eloquently states, “if we make worlds, the meaning of truth lays not in
these worlds but in ourselves-or better, in our versions and what we do with
them.”

The question then becomes how we create a world. What is the process of constructing the
occult world? For both Putnam and Goodman, we construct objects and set the
boundaries through language. We don’t infer inductively the external world
because we created it. But it’s not a case of “anything goes” when we construct
our world. There must be a distinction between truth and our beliefs. Goodman
provides a candid solution in which world-making might be limited. He uses a
simple stereo as a platform. When we identify the various properties of a
stereo (speakers, turntable, remote etc…) we exhibit a good amount of ‘making’
what is ‘already there’. However, for somebody who has never seen a stereo,
that sort of world-making does not occur. It is lost on them. The world then is
always in a state of flux and dependent on contextual circumstances. What is real or a world for one person may not be the case for somebody else. This
makes looking through the lens of occult as viable as any socio-political point
of view. Bruno Latour also makes this point when he remarks that “there are many worlds, those of cultures, those of
viewpoints, those of beliefs and psychological states, those of religious
dogmas. But those many worlds have only subjective relevance.” For somebody not
privy to occult symbolic systems and language, it is easy to simply not recognize
its many properties perhaps even during an experiential event.

Feyerabend’s ‘paradigm of appearances’ is also valuable in
the occult’s network of the numinous. In particular, god in the three Abrahamic
religions provides a solid platform with which to approach the mechanisms of
occult thought. He suggests that the Christian, Judaic, and Muslim god is
ultimately the same god but described differently. This god appears to people
in different ways but it’s the same reality. Gods and reality are ineffable and
determined by interpretations of appearances. For Feyerabend, just as in modern
occultism, reality is pliable and we sculpt
the external world. This becomes very interesting when we start to include
other Semitic gods and goddesses as well as tribal spirits and local deities
that still are geographically present in
the area. Do we sculpt interactions between these deities? How might
political nuances change due to serious consideration of the entities in the
area? Because different peoples, like occult groups, share many aspects of
characteristics, potentially every occult group is all occult groups. This is
an encouraging thought because it recognizes the many shared mechanisms in
thought and belief. And as we construct our realities through rites and symbol,
it’s easy to embrace our many similarities and forget, at least temporarily,
where our experiences of reality differ.